Author: arc trades

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure” – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

As of 5/14/17

Age: 25

Net Worth: 30,000

As of 2/7/17

Age: 26

Net Worth: 60,000

Thoughts from the past 8 months:

The path to wealth is not working for someone else / in a corporation. Bringing products of value to fruition leads to true wealth.

If you bring something novel and useful to this world, something people need that they didn’t even know they needed, you will be handsomely rewarded both monetarily and spiritually.

My net worth has doubled, driven by favorable market movement, but I find myself drawn less toward a specific number and more toward fulfilling a purpose.

I’m shifting my focus from what to why. To quote Benjamin Hardy’s terrific article on Medium:

You get to decide right now.

Your vision should be based on your why, not so much yourwhat.

Your whyis your reason, your what is how that is manifest. And your “what” can happen in a ton of different ways. For example, my why is to help people get clarity on the life they want to live, and to help them achieve their goals as quickly as possible. My whatcould be blogging, parenting, being a student, going out to dinner, and several other things.

Too many people think creating a vision is about nailing down exactly whatthey want in the next 20 years. The problem with this mega long-term approach to goal setting is that it actually slows your potential.

Instead of having a pre-set plan of what he wants to do, Tim Ferriss executes on 3-6 month experiments that he’s currently excited about. He told Darren Hardy in an interview that he has no clue what the outcome of his experiments might be. So there’s no point in making long-term plans. He has no clue what doors will open up, and he wants to be open to the best possibilities.

But his why doesn’t change.

When you are proactively creating and collaborating with many different people, the whole becomes different and better than the sum of its parts. This is why you can’t plan for everything. Because at the highest level, you’ve transcended your need to have things exactly how you want them. You know that with the help of other people, you can do things 10X, 100X, or 1000X bigger and better than you could ever conceive on your own.

Rather than expecting a particular outcome, you are completely confident that the best outcome will ensue. This is how you create and contribute beyond anything you could ever comprehend. Collaboration and synergy lead to new innovations and ultimately, human evolution. It’s how the old and outdated rules are redefined and replaced with new and better ones, thus changing the global environment.

My “why” is to use technology to help people improve their lives and continually move toward a better version of themselves.

I am still drawn to the goal of having a net worth of $1,000,000 before 30, but that goal is now less relevant/important from eight months ago.

To close, I couldn’t have said it better than Jim Rohn did here:

“The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire.” — Jim Rohn

Thanks for reading. I’ve listed the books I’ve read, will read, and am reading right now below.

Don’t bet on a comeback after a reverse stock split, ESPECIALLY when the firm in question received notice from the NASDAQ about keeping their stock above $1

Don’t fall for confirmation bias –more than once, I found myself searching the web / news / stocktwits / seeking alpha / etc. looking for something to confirm that this stock was going to make a come back and that I would be rewarded for holding and hoping. I was looking for Ovaprene (flagship drug that DARE is developing) to be a game changer, but their game plan is far out, two years – not now.

Don’t fall for wanting to be right over making money. I was wrong, I should have cut my losses as soon as my mental stop was hit.

Respect your max loss for each trade. Focus on minimizing the downside, the upside will take care of itself. Instead of focusing on the amount of money you can make from a trade, focus on what is the MOST you can risk losing.

Trading without a system, is asking for disaster. Focus on three things:

High Level: Dragged out, hope filled disappointment. The silver lining is that this is an experience I can learn from and the loss is bearable, I’m only trading with what I can lose – with what I can psychologically handle.

Strategy: Initially, buy the breakout on good news and exit at target. What actually happened: Hold, hope, hold the bags & suffer till you can’t take it anymore. From what I’ve read … classic new trader behavior.

Exit description: I sold my 200 shares of DARE earlier this morning because I finally realized how ridiculous my reasons were for holding. From the very beginning I was stubborn and wanted to be right instead of seeing what was in front of me, a clear pump and dump that I should have left at first sign of declining volume and flattening price action. I was greedy. I didn’t want to realize a loss at $200, but my total loss could be $200 and not $1,500. On the flip side, I am thankful that this was a $1,500 loss, not $15,000 or $150,000. This is tuition, this is education, I need these losses to learn what not to do.

A few more takeaways from this trade:

Don’t bet on a comeback from a conference call

Don’t bet on a comeback after a reverse stock split, ESPECIALLY when the firm in question received notice from the NASDAQ about keeping their stock above $1

Don’t fall for confirmation bias –more than once, I found myself searching the web / news / stocktwits / seeking alpha / etc. looking for something to confirm that this stock was going to make a come back and that I would be rewarded for holding and hoping. I was looking for Ovaprene (flagship drug that DARE is developing) to be a game changer, but their game plan is far out, two years – not now.

Don’t fall for wanting to be right over making money. I was wrong, I should have cut my losses as soon as my mental stop was hit.

Respect your max loss for each trade. Focus on minimizing the downside, the upside will take care of itself. Instead of focusing on the amount of money you can make from a trade, focus on what is the MOST you can risk losing.

Trading without a system, is asking for disaster. Focus on three things: